That's hilarious! A modern vision of the future (the video is (c) 2006), that looks basically like Disney's tomorrow-land. It makes sense that the ideas in the video are so shopworn -- the guy behind it is 92 years old! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco>
For precursors to this silly stuff, see the works of Corbusier <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier>. He died in 1965, but was pushing his "Contemporary City" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ville_Contemporaine> basically his whole life. Like the lunacy in the video, it envisioned a "from scratch" city, though Corbu was crazy enough to propose bulldozing much of Paris (Paris!!!!) to make room for his new design. A good deal of the "urban renewal" schemes <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_renewal> of the 50s and 60s were based on the urban design ideas presented in the video (get rid of "inefficient" old urban fabric, replace with new vertical, efficiently-built fabric) and boy, that turned out great. Some folks were so taken in by the modernist urban concept, they actually followed up on it. The capital of Brazil, Brasilia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brasilia> is designed on a circular plan, with strict separation of uses (work here, live there, play over there). Like Corbusier's design, it is optimized for non-human variables, things like transportation efficiency and separated land use. It too pre-dates this video by decades. I has a lot of modernist masterpieces, set (of course) in solitude in vast parking lots, away from distracting, messy people. There is a satellite development of Rome, EUR, planned by Mussolini, that had similar "from scratch" modernist design pretensions, and it too is a bit of a wasteland. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esposizione_Universale_Roma> Jane Jacobs <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs> wrote a couple good books about how *people* use urban spaces, which are good primer for understanding why "from scratch" cities just won't ever work: "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" and "The Economy of Cities". I remain blown away by that video, truly, it's like a time-warp -- better life through engineering. It's true though, as the video says, that having a vision of the future is helpful if you want to maintain consistent progress towards betterment (assuming your vision is actually "better"). However, if I were to import and reuse an "vision of the future from the past", I'd choose Callenbach's "Ecotopia" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotopia> over this tomorrow-land stuff any day. P. On Thu, Jan 1, 2009 at 12:41 PM, Christian Willmes <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi everyone, > > I just watched a nice video on "designing the Future": > http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-307353090876018425&hl=en > > There is a very nice part on how a GIS could look like in the future. > The part is from 6:40 to 7:10 min. from the video start. > > Watch and enjoy! :) > > By the way, happy new year! :) > > - Christian > > -- > http://www.christian-willmes.de > > In a true society, people would follow their natural inclinations and work to > contribute to society not because they are "paid" for it, but because they > have a greater awareness which recognizes that contributing to society helps > them just as much as everyone else. (Zeitgeist) > > > > _______________________________________________ > Geowanking mailing list > [email protected] > http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org > _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org
